Cotswold Hop Kilns 1914

Henry Rushbury made "Cotswold Hop Kilns" with etching on paper. It's a tiny little world, a web of delicate lines creating depth and texture. I imagine Rushbury hunched over the plate, working in reverse, each stroke a commitment. Those trees, for instance—they're not just shapes, they're built from a million tiny decisions, a choreography of light and shadow. The way the lines vary in weight, the way the surface is modulated...it's like he's conjuring the very air of the Cotswolds. What was he thinking as he made it? You see echoes of Whistler in the atmospheric quality and maybe a nod to the precision of Dürer. Artists are always in conversation with each other, aren't they, across time and space? He creates a world out of ink. There's so much tenderness in the making, and it opens into many ways of seeing and experiencing the world.